1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic postage meters, and is more particularly directed to an electronic postage meter of the type having a keyboard for the entry of postage to be printed, a display for displaying postage to be printed as well as other date, an electronic counting device, and a printing mechanism.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Devices of the above type are generally known and are discussed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,457, Check, et al. This reference discloses a system for a postal meter including a keyboard for the manual introduction of data corresponding to the postage to be printed.
Copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 024,812 filed Mar. 28, 1979, for McFiggans and Eckert, entitled ELECTRONIC POSTAGE METER HAVING AN ACCOUNTING SYSTEM INDEPENDENT OF POWER FAILURE and assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses an electronic postage meter of the type adapted to be driven by a postage meter base, the base being of the type disclosed for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,934,009, Bach, et al. When bases of this type are employed in combination with postage meters, the meter bases are generally provided with a lever for recocking or resetting the trip mechanism. Thereby, under conditions when a disabled meter system was tripped, it was required that the meter base be reset by the lever mechanically prior to operation, in order to avoid the unwanted printing of postage.
In prior conventional and electronic meters, a shutter is provided to block the meter from printing, in one position of the shutter. The shutter must be moved to its other position in order to enable the meter to complete printing cycles. An interposer is further provided engaging the shutter, so that the shutter cannot be moved to a position that will permit a printing operation. The interposer, which may be a lever, can be held in position by the control system of the meter for a variety of reasons, such as the dater door of the meter being open, the dollar lock key not being depressed, when necessary, or in the case of an electronic meter, if power is not available. If, under any of these circumstances the mailing base is tripped, it will attempt to move the postage meter shutter forward before the start of a printing cycle. This action will result in the shutter jamming against the interposer, whereby the interposer, if it is designed as generally disclosed in copending application Ser. No. 024,812, will not be moved out of blocking position even though the initial reasons for blocking have been cleared, due to the force on the shutter from the shutter lever of the mailing base.
The only way to clear the postal meter system in this case, is to remove the force from the shutter by recocking or resetting the trip mechanism in the mailing base, thereby permitting the interposer to rise or be resiliently engaged out of blocking position (unless some other reason for blocking occurs). In the past, total reliance for operation of the machine in such circumstances depended upon operator experience, and no means were provided to indicate to the operator that recocking or resetting of the mailing base mechanism was necessary.